TMG Ad Campaign for Middle Ages Brewing Sparks Debate

2 min read

May 19, 2016

The Internet is an interesting place. There are corners where people debate if the wristwatch one of the Orcs was wearing in The Lord of the Rings was a mistake or if Orcs really prefer Timex. And why do they need to tell time anyway?

A while back, The Martin Group created an award-winning campaign for our friends at Middle Ages Brewing in Syracuse. With a theme of Get Medieval, it shows people in the modern world who have embraced the medieval to enjoy a bit of an advantage. One of the posters shows a man fishing with a sword…the modern embodiment of ImPaled Ale.

Several people noted that the fish wasn’t native to the presumed location. Another commented that spearfishing is illegal in all cases. And if you look closely, you’d realize the fish would have to have been doing the backstroke to end up in his predicament.

The reality is it was shot in Oatka Creek in Scottsville, NY. No animals were harmed because the fish had been hanging on a wall since the Clinton administration. Often great advertising is about exaggerating the truth to stop viewers and get attention. So if we could have found a bigger fish, we would have used it—even if it were so foreign to the waters that Donald Trump wanted to deport it.

We also didn’t slay any dragons for one of the other ads in the series. We wanted to, you see, but the Orc that was our hunting guide forgot to set his watch to daylight savings time…